The Ballyhale secret

Tom Hunt, principal of Ballyhale Vocational School in Co Kilkenny, recognises a special atmosphere in his school. "There is a sense of euphoria about the place," he says, with a hesitant smile. After 16 years of waiting, the long-promised building of a new school is finally under way.

The new school is expected to be ready by next September. Fingers are crossed, hopes are high, and all around there are smiling faces. A new school was approved for Ballyhale way back in 1981, but a series of delays and problems outside the school's control prevented construction beginning until last month. Today there are diggers, concrete mixers and hard hats in evidence all around.

There are up to 330 students in the school, housed in 19 separate classroom units, including 13 prefabs. "They are individual old-style pre-fabs, leaking, hard to heat . . . abysmal conditions, they reflect the expansion that took place within post-primary education," Hunt says as he looks out on a JCB rumbling away down the yard.

In the long 16-year wait, he explains, "there was a great sense of commitment here. Parents' support for the school was total. They walked up and down with placards. They did that out of a really, really strong sense that rural communities were being denuded. They felt that very strongly, they never accepted that they should not have a proper facility here."

Hunt recalls one parent speaking of the need to keep young people in the area until they are 18. "They'll put down some sort of roots then and, even if they have to go, they'll feel the need to come back."

As if in spite of the pre-fabs, over the years students have continued to win a litany of awards in a range of areas, including public speaking, art, essays, sport and scholarships for overall academic achievement. This year Transition Year students raised money for Chernobyl and won the 1997 gold City Foundation Gulbenkian Youth Award for Ireland.

Last year the school won the bronze award. In the past five years students have won some of the top prizes for art in both the individual and the team categories of the Europe at School Competition.

In sport students have won plenty of prizes and trophies. Although the school has no pitch or indoor facilities of any kind, the girls football team this year reached the Leinster semi-final. Last year they reached the south-west Leinster soccer final, and the boys hurling team reached the under-16 Leinster final.

"The limits we set are in our own minds," says Hunt. "We don't look at things and say we can't participate because we don't have the facilities. We look at it and say so that's what we want to do, now how do we go about getting it."

The school has 20 full-time teachers. The original school was built in 1959. Maureen Roche, the school's art teacher, has taught here for the past 17 years. The new school will make a difference "from a community point of view," she believes. More importantly, she adds, "the school has a heart." The school's secret to success, she confides, is that "we make it our business to know the parents and the community. I came from a rural background and it was important to me that people from rural backgrounds got the chances."

Increasingly her students have picked up prizes and awards over the years. She says it's because "I just have a belief in them to prove to themselves what they can do. It's an encouragement from the moment they start to lead out of each person their best self."

A school is not just a building, says Tom Hunt. "If ever there was proof of that it's this place. A school is about providing a space where young people can be educated, grow, learn, respect, believe . . . we have no hall but we have won the All-Ireland final in Feile Dramaiochta na Scoile."

Somewhat hurt by the long years of waiting, Hunt refers in passing to the injustice of such a long delay. "Looking at the physical conditions that were here I would denounce the people who would have talked about equality of educational opportunity. I would say that the teachers, the students and the parents and the education system deserved better, deserved just to be equal."

He laughs at the irony of a letter which Oxford University sent after a student from Ballyhale Vocational School was offered a place on one of its law degree courses. It read: We would like to take this opportunity to thank your school for recommending our college to this student. "If only they had got an aerial photograph of the school," says Hunt, crumpling up with laughter at this irony. The student did go to Oxford to study law.

When Hunt wants to call a general assembly, he gets a chair and stands in front of the students who gather outside on the grass. He must wait for the sun to come out before he calls them all outside. In the new school, apart from classrooms, "we'll have a pitch, a gym, a place where we can meet."

"You can talk to your teachers," says Nicola Fitzgerald, a Leaving Cert student. Patrick McDonald, a new student who is repeating his Leaving Cert here, feels that "you can get on well with the people out here, the environment doesn't matter," he says. Louise Healy and Emmaleene O'Brien nod enthusiastically. "It's a bit disappointing that we won't be here to see the new school," Louise adds.

David Kirwan, a Transition Year student, says "it's a nicer school" compared with other schools. "It'll be great when the new school is ready. There'll be more work done, more facilities, a whole refurbishment, more rooms. He adds wisely: "But it's only good if you work."